The Stony Path (9 page)

She raised her head, her gaze sweeping the small room she shared with Ruth, which was the same size as her parents’ bedroom. The last of the sunlight was shining through the narrow window and making a pool of gold on the old faded quilt at the end of the bed; soon it would reach the stone wall beyond and then it would begin to get dark. While these thoughts were on the surface of her mind, her real self was tackling the issues raised by the conversation she had unwittingly overheard as she’d stood hesitating on the landing.

Her mam was nasty, spiteful – she had always known it, but because it was her mam it had been acceptable – but more than that, her mam didn’t like her. She liked Ruth, but she didn’t like her, and Mam knew that by stopping the lads coming on a Sunday she would hurt her. It might upset Ruth but it would hurt Polly, and that was why her mam had said what she had. Why did Mam always want to hurt her? Polly pressed her hand against her mouth. Ruth never took their mam her meals if she could help it, or picked her little bunches of wild flowers to look at while she lay in bed, or any of the other things she did to try and please her. And yet her mam liked Ruth and not her. She took a gulp of the hot tea by way of comfort.

Whatever she did to please her, Mam would never like her. The knowledge that had been at the back of her mind from a very young child couldn’t be denied any more. Sometimes, when she was talking to her mam after she’d brought her something, and Mam shut her eyes as though she was tired, Polly knew it was because she couldn’t bear to look at her. And then when she left the room after saying she’d let her mam go to sleep, but had the horrible sick feeling in her for the rest of the day, it was because she had known all along what Mam was thinking. She had, but she had thought that if she didn’t admit it then it wouldn’t be real. Which made her stupid. She blinked fiercely, refusing to allow the scalding feeling at the back of her eyes to turn into tears.

Well, she wouldn’t try to make Mam like her any more. She drank the rest of the tea straight down. You couldn’t anyway; people either did or they didn’t, and if they didn’t they’d find a hundred reasons not to, like Ann Boyce at school. Even though she didn’t manage to get to school every day because of the farm and her granny needing her, she did better at her lessons than Ann Boyce, and that was why Ann hated her, although she tried to make on it was other things. But Ann Boyce, with her swanky airs and graces and her drippy nose, was one thing; her mam –
her own mam
– was another. For a moment Polly’s slender shoulders slumped and she felt a desolation so deep as to be frightening sweep over her before she straightened, her arms going back and her chest expanding, as she said out loud, ‘Michael likes me,’ and then even more loudly, ‘Michael likes me an’ I like him,’ and the declaration was of the same portent as the one Michael himself had made earlier.

Chapter Three

Nathaniel Blackett was proud of his two sons, although he would have allowed himself to be hung, drawn and quartered before he admitted to the fact. Now forty-three years of age, he had been working down the pit from the age of eight, and his face and body – scarred and stained with the blue marks stamped on it by the ‘black diamonds’ he mined – could have belonged to a man some twenty years his senior. His aged appearance wasn’t helped by his small, wiry build, although in the job he did, his size worked to his advantage. Most of the roadways down the pit weren’t made for the convenience of a full-grown man, and the smaller and nimbler a miner, the better he fared. Nobody at the pit ever got paid for travelling time, even if they had to crawl for over a mile from the bottom of the shaft, so the quicker they got to where they were working, the better for everyone concerned.

But at least his lads had had the benefit of an education and had been fourteen years of age before they’d gone underground. Nathaniel stretched, easing his aching back, which had been bent over his spade all afternoon, as he gazed up into the darkening sky in which the first stars were beginning to twinkle.

He still remembered his first day down the pit as though it was yesterday. His mam had shaken him awake at three in the morning and it had still been dark when he’d reached the pit and gone down in the cage. He’d walked along the horse-way for upwards of a mile before he’d reached the barrow-way, over which the young men and boys pushed the trams with the tubs on rails. They’d settled him in a little hole inside one of the trapdoors on the barrow-way, and it had been his job to pull a piece of string to open the door when a man or boy wanted to pass through. He’d been terrified; it couldn’t have been darker than if he’d been born blind, but with candles at a penny a day out of his fourpence-a-day wage, his mam and da had told him he’d got to get used to it and he’d better start right off.

He hadn’t been scared of mice and rats before that day, not when he could see them, but it had been a different kettle of fish when he could hear the rats squealing and fighting over some morsel or other and feel the mice running over his hands now and again. But bad as that had been, it was the great ugly flying beetles that had turned his bowels to water. Feelers as long as a cat’s whiskers – you could stamp on them, jump on them, squash their guts out and still they’d crawl away. Aye, he’d never got used to them, still hadn’t if the truth be known. One of them dropping down your neck was enough to spoil the best day.

By, he’d been right glad when the sound of ‘Loose, loose!’ had reached his ears and he’d known it was four o’clock and time to knock off. Nathaniel grinned up into the charcoal sky, taking a great lungful of fresh, clean air that carried the tang of woodsmoke from a neighbouring bonfire. Aye, he had that. As a trapper he’d waited until the last putter had passed with his tram and then he’d been off to the foot of the shaft. His mam had had a man’s dinner waiting for him, he could smell it still. Baked potatoes and tripe and onions, followed by as many girdle scones as he could eat. He’d never forgotten the taste of them hot scones dripping with butter. His mam had been a canny body right enough. She’d known that his bait was eaten along with the muck, dust and sweat that went with working underground.

He frowned suddenly, the elation of working in the crisp northern air after six days of knowing nothing of the ascending or descending sun gone. She’d been a good mother and a good wife, his mam, and his da had known it. Her family had been her life and he’d never heard her complain, not over his da’s gambling or drinking or the hardship that went hand in hand with being a pitman’s wife. And Dora, Nathaniel’s first wife, had been from the same mould, whereas Eva ... Every night Eva created merry hell about banging their clothes against the wall in the backyard to get the worst of the muck off. There was no give and take with Eva. And to think he’d once thought she was a defenceless little lassie in need of love and protection! By, her da had seen him coming all right. Right fool old Walter had taken him for. Still, Eva had never refused him his rights as her husband once Michael had been born, even if she did lie there like a sack of flour, and he and the lads always came home to a hot meal. That was something. He repeated the thought as though he needed convincing. Aye, there were others worse off, he’d be bound.

He’d wondered how she’d be with the bairn once it was born, her supposedly having been taken down against her will, but she treated Michael no better and no worse than his two lads. Maybe, in hindsight, he should have asked her about the circumstances of her despoilment, but he’d thought it better to let sleeping dogs lie. He couldn’t quite work her out if the truth be known. She’d got a tongue on her that could cut you to pieces and not an ounce of tenderness in the whole of her big frame, and when it came to bawling you out she was second to none, and yet sometimes he felt there was a softer side to her. Had she really been unwilling all those years ago?

Nathaniel stood for a moment more before pushing his lips outwards and shaking his grey head irritably. What did he know? Nowt. Double nowt. He’d never have taken her on if he’d had an inkling of what the last twelve years would be like, that was for sure, and one of the most ironic things in the whole set-up was that Michael looked more like his lad than his own bairns did. Funny, that.

He stretched again, glancing over the square of ground that had held the last of his crop of vegetables. Another week or two and he’d have to dig the land over, but he didn’t mind that; kept him sane, this bit allotment.

There was still work to do up here in the winter, and the comradeship that went on in all the rough huts built from a mixture of old timber, corrugated iron, orange boxes and the like, made for some canny afternoons. Half the blokes were miners and well known to him, like old George next door.

Nathaniel glanced at the neat patch of land next to his, and an image of dour-faced, hoary old George flashed into his mind. He’d had to be carried home last Christmas Eve, old George, after they’d all brought a sup of something and a few mince pies to toast the occasion. That had been an afternoon to remember, right enough. They’d all been well oiled by the time they had left the allotment, but it had only been when George had tried to rise from his seat on an orange box and fallen flat on his face that they’d realised he was mortalious. And then he’d started singing. By, could he punch ’em out, and none of ’em for a lady’s ears! They’d tried to gag him halfway home but he hadn’t been having any of it, and when they’d finally plonked him down by his front door he’d staggered to a nearby lamppost and started doing an Irish jig under the dark night sky punctured with a million twinkling stars, holding on to the lamppost for support.

His wife Myra – built like a tank and with a face on her to frighten the devil himself – had given them all gyp for bringing her man home in such a state. Bit of a tartar, George’s Myra, but the lass had got a heart of gold under that gruff exterior, although it hadn’t been obvious that day. Not with the neighbours all peering out from behind their curtains and laughing. Sent them all packing with a flea in the ear, she had, after hauling George into the house by his ear and him yelping like a bairn.

Nathaniel chuckled at the memory, brushing his grimy hands against his old cloth coat before making his way out of the allotments, his cap pulled low over his forehead.

He was carrying a sack filled with the last of his crop of vegetables, but he still managed to light a Woodbine as he walked, drawing the smoke from the cigarette deep into his lungs as his rheumy eyes – caused by years of acrid coal dust and thick grime – narrowed with satisfaction. He’d had a good afternoon and he was more than ready for his tea; likely Eva and the lads would be back from the farm by now.

She was always in a funny mood come Sunday night, funnier than usual that was. His face straightened as he thought of his wife again. But he’d long since stopped worrying about the whys and wherefores concerning Eva’s moods. As long as she put the dinner on before she went to Mass on Sunday morning – although Nathaniel kept his church visiting to high days and holidays, he made sure Eva kept the family’s ticket to heaven up to date by her regular attendance – and hurried back without gossiping after, so she could dish up in time for him to have a clear run at the allotment, he didn’t mind her visiting her mam and da. He never thought it did her any good, mind, but that was her business. He wasn’t going to poke his neb in one way or the other; he’d got it bitten off too many times in the past for that.

It was almost dark when Nathaniel reached Bow Street, and the air had turned chilly. The nights were drawing in fast and winter was round the corner. Nathaniel had his head down as he passed a group of men hanging about at the corner of Southwick Road and he was thinking about his tea, but when one of them croaked his name, followed by, ‘You’re in a hurry the night, Nat. Who’s on your tail, man?’ he stopped and turned round, and the man left the others and walked over to him.

Nathaniel had known Bill Hutton all his life. They had played together as bairns and Bill had started down the pit just a month after him, but old as Nathaniel looked, the man in front of him appeared to give him twenty years. Bill had been in line for a few lungfuls of firedamp in an explosion at the pit some twelve months before which had brought the roof – continually weakened by dripping water from above – down on a bunch of miners making for their working point. It had been two days before they had reached Bill, the only survivor of the accident, and the company had refused to pay any compensation, as the miners had been travelling to their appointed place in the pit, not actually working, when the explosion had occurred. After they’d got him out and it had been apparent his insides were cindered and he’d never work again, some folk had said Bill ought to be glad he was still alive. Funny, but Bill had never seen it that way, and Nathaniel didn’t blame him. When your bairns were starving and you’d lost every scrap of dignity you ever had, being alive wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. How they’d stayed out of the workhouse this long Nathaniel didn’t know, but Bill and his wife both came from large families scattered all around Monkwearmouth, so perhaps that was the answer. But handouts from families hard pressed themselves couldn’t last forever.

‘Just bin up the allotment, man, same as usual,’ said Nathaniel.

Bill nodded. His days of working at an allotment or anywhere else were over; he was hard pressed to put one foot in front of the other most days. ‘Aye, nice day for it.’

‘Nice enough.’ Nathaniel kept his voice casual as he looked at the broken, bent man in front of him whose scrawny wrists sticking out from the ragged cuffs of his jacket looked as though they’d snap with the slightest of pressure. ‘Got a few veg I don’t know what to do with; don’t suppose you an’ Peggy could use ’em?’